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Strong IMF By-Related Plasma Convection in the Ionosphere and Cusp Field-Aligned Currents Under Northward IMF Conditions (2001)

Author: Le, G.; Lu, G.; Strangeway, R. J.; Pfaff, R. F., Jr
Subject: PRESSURE MEASUREMENT; COMPUTER PROGRAMS; INTEGRITY; SCANNERS; AUTOMATIC CONTROL; PROGRAM VERIFICATION (COMPUTERS); ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT; CHECKOUT
Year: 2001
Language: English
Book contributor: NASA
Collection: nasa_techdocs

Description

We present in this paper an investigation of IMF-By related plasma convection and cusp field-aligned currents using FAST data and AMIE model during a prolonged interval with large positive IMF By and northward Bz conditions (By/Bz much greater than 1). Using the FAST single trajectory observations to validate the global convection patterns at key times and key locations, we have demonstrated that the AMIE procedure provides a reasonably good description of plasma circulations in the ionosphere during this interval. Our results show that the plasma convection in the ionosphere is consistent with the anti-parallel merging model. When the IMF has a strongly positive By component under northward conditions, we find that the global plasma convection forms two cells oriented nearly along the Sun-earth line in the ionosphere. In the northern hemisphere, the dayside cell has clockwise convection mainly circulating within the polar cap on open field lines. A second cell with counterclockwise convection is located in the nightside circulating across the polar cap boundary, The observed two-cell convection pattern appears to be driven by the reconnection along the anti-parallel merging lines poleward of the cusp extending toward the dusk side when IMF By/Bz much greater than 1. The magnetic tension force on the newly reconnected field lines drives the plasma to move from dusk to dawn in the polar cusp region near the polar cap boundary. The field-aligned currents in the cusp region flow downward into the ionosphere. The return field-aligned currents extend into the polar cap in the center of the dayside convection cell. The field-aligned currents are closed through the Peterson currents in the ionosphere, which flow poleward from the polar cap boundary along the electric field direction.

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Selected metadata

Identifier:	nasa_techdoc_20020018821
Document-source:	CASI
Documentid:	20020018821
Nasa-center:	Goddard Space Flight Center
Online-source:	http://wayback.archive-it.org/1792/20100129002346/http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20020018821
Original-nasa-rights:	Unclassified; No Copyright; Unlimited; Publicly available;
Report-number:	E-13011; NAS 1.15:211155; NASA/TM-2001-211155
Updated-added-to-ntrs:	2005-08-25
Licenseurl:	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
Mediatype:	texts
Rights:	Public Domain
Identifier-access:	http://www.archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_20020018821
Identifier-ark:	ark:/13960/t13n31q8c
Ppi:	300
Ocr:	ABBYY FineReader 8.0